Sub-Zero
by VokunLoor
Summary: The geological phenomenon has steadily been growing and moving south. The entire United States has been buried under snow and ice and millions are no doubt dead. Food, water, and temperature are now the only three things that matter in life and James will do everything he can to keep from fading into the Long Dark.
1. Chapter 1

The first thing I heard when I woke up was the static coming from my radio, the first thing I felt was the agonizing cold. My hands were numb and I had no feeling in my feet. I was all but completely frozen. I tried to move but my body refused to cooperate, the most I could do was turn my head towards my bedroom window. All I could see through it was darkness which was odd; my clock said it was noon. Pain erupted through my entire body as I forced myself to sit up; the sound of ice shattering as I rose up was a horrible sign. I pulled the sheets from my legs and stood up; I promptly fell over when my legs gave out from under me. I pulled the chair at my desk over to me and sat down; I then wheeled myself over to the light in the corner and twisted the knob to turn it on. Nothing happened. I reached for my phone and turned it on, the battery was only half way charged and if the power was out then I would have to ration it. I turned the flashlight on and pointed it out the window. The blackness turned into a pure white blob all along the glass.

I put my hand on the glass but jerked it away fast when I was met with severe pain. It was around this time that I realized that my heater was on full blast, why was it so damn cold then? The best I could get out of the heater was to thaw myself out enough to where it no longer hurt to move, but as soon as I pulled away I could feel the cold invading me again. I reached into the dresser next to my desk and pulled on a pair of pants and a shirt. I attempted to put my shoes on but the laces were frozen at their full extent and without them I would just walk right out of my shoes. I left them to thaw out over the heater and put on three pairs of socks to keep warm. I pushed away from my desk and headed out into my living room, the lights out here were busted to. My first instinct was to check the breaker box on the side of the house, I approached the sliding glass door to my backyard but the white stuff was all around here too.

I put my hand through the dog door on the side of the glass and grabbed a handful of the stuff outside. Snow? This didn't make any sense to me, it never snowed where I lived and my whole house appeared to be completely buried. I walked to the kitchen window to see the front of the house. There was a light coming through and I could see my front yard just fine. For some reason the back half of my house was completely under snow but the front half was just fine. There was still a shit ton of snow in the front mind you, just not enough to keep me from leaving. While I was staring into the front yard I noticed that there were no cars in the driveway and my dad's truck wasn't parked on the road. On top of that I didn't see my dogs anywhere either. I felt a sudden fear that the dogs got stuck outside in the blizzard, I had to get into my backyard now. I ran to my room and put my shoes on, I could finally use the laces but they were still very stiff.

I headed back through my kitchen and went through the door to the garage. The left wall was where we kept out tools so it was the first place I looked for a shovel. The lights in here worked just fine which meant that the power was still on in most of the house. I grabbed a shovel off the wall and headed back to the sliding door. I unlocked it and pried it open using the shovel like a crowbar. The snow was not tightly packed and a mound of it fell into the room when the door slid all the way open. It looked like only a thin layer was resting in front of the door; this meant that the winds had to have been blowing towards the back of my house which would explain the snow covering my bedroom window. I cleared the snow enough to let me get into the backyard and was instantly assaulted by wind so cold it felt like my skin was being cut away at. I shrugged this off as best I could and started searching for my dogs. I couldn't find any of the three and I was sort of glad, I couldn't stand to see my dogs frozen to death out here.

Hoping that one of my family members had taken the dogs with them I put the thought out of my mind and went to the side of the house to check the breaker box. Two of the circuit breakers were switched off so I turned them back on and headed back inside to get out of the cold. I had to shovel the snow out of the way so I could slide the door shut again. With the door closed it was easily thirty degrees warmer inside. The thermostat read twenty degrees, this made me very concerned. I went into the living room and turned on the T.V to see if any emergency broadcasts were running. Every channel was the same alert message on loop, _Warning, Do not attempt to leave your homes. Stay indoors and burn whatever you can to stay warm. Ration your food and water to last you at least three months. Electricity and Water will be available for as long as it can be provided so plan accordingly. Check back frequently for updates on the current situation. Current temperature is -30 Degrees Fahrenheit. _Thirty degrees below zero? This is supposed to be sunny California, not Alaska. And to have this on every channel meant a good amount of the country had to be experiencing the same thing. I sat on my couch for a long time trying to decide what to do. Getting firewood was defiantly the first thing on my mind and there was plenty of it in a pile in the back yard. My second thought was of food. The family hadn't gone shopping in a while now so the fridge was most likely barren of food. I could check around my neighborhood to see if anyone had left some food behind. If they were gone then they sure as hell had no more use for it.

While I was thinking of other things I would need to do a loud howl cried out in the distance. I bolted out of my seat and ran to the window and to my horror I saw a pack of no less than five dogs roaming around the street. So leaving the house was not an option at this point in time. I had plenty of guns and ammo, but I was no match for five hungry dogs. I went to the dog door and sealed it up by pushing an end table in front of it. My back yard was completely sealed off and there was most likely no way for the dogs to get back here but I refused to take the chance. On the second door to the left in my hallway was a closet, this was the closet in which we kept our guns. A single twelve gauge shotgun, three hunting rifles, a glock, and a six shot revolver. I strapped the revolver to my hip and grabbed the shotgun off the rack. I pumped it until all of the ammo was unloaded and I took count of how many had fit inside. This particular gun could hold up to six bullets including one in the chamber. I reloaded the gun and put it on the coffee table in the living room so I could easily grab it should I have need of it.

After arming myself I went into each of the three bedrooms and took all the sheets from the beds and put them in a pile of the living room sofa. I then grabbed a pot from the kitchen and found a lid to go with it and headed to the back door. I filled the pot three fourths of the way full with snow and then put the pot on the stove with the lid on and began to melt it. I have a very basic understanding of what to do in survival situations which is why I didn't just eat the snow for water. I had no doubt that the pipes under the house would be frozen so I didn't attempt to use the sink right away. I looked through my cupboards to see if we had any canned food that I could eat while I attempted to wait out the dogs outside. There was a can of olives and a can of tomato soup. If I ate only a third of one can for a meal I could make this last for three days. As for water, there was an unlimited supply of snow to melt down and boil into safe drinking water so there was no concern there.

While rummaging around my kitchen I found a note attached to the side of the fridge with a magnate that read: _Dear James, I have taken the dogs to see the vet and will then take them to the groomers for a bath because they smell like shit. I should be home around 2pm, please take the garbage out and fast. Snow is falling, I'm not really sure how, its snowed here before like twice and only a little. But there is a lot this time so call your father and see if there is anything that he needs brought into the house so it doesn't get wet when the snow melts. I will see you when I get home sweet heart – Mom._ At least I knew the dogs were with someone, which took a load off of my mind. As for calling my father, my phone wasn't getting any signal so that was out of the question. Looking at my phone I remembered that it needed a charge so I hooked it up too power in the living room. If I was going to survive in this frozen shit hole, I needed to make this place a lot warmer and I needed to find a shit ton of dried goods to eat. There is a 7-11 down the street a ways and if those dogs are gone in the morning then I will start my search for food there.

The lid on the pot that was melting the snow was starting to move a bit so I took the pot off the heat so the water inside could cool down. I took the time to test and see if the faucet was still pumping water, it wasn't. I looked at the clock on the coffee machine to the right of the sink and saw that it was already seven. I wasn't particularly hungry so I left my small supply of food untouched and went back into the living room. I pushed my coffee table to the side so that there was a large open space in the middle of the room and put the pile of sheets in the middle of the area. I went back into each room and took all the pillows and added them to the bottom of the pile to be used as a make-shift mattress. I then burrowed inside of the sheet pile and left a hole in the top so that fresh air could flow through. I moved the pillows around until I found an arrangement that was comfortable and slowly drifted off to sleep.

In my dream I was in a room with nothing but two doors on the furthest wall. A voice in my head demanded me too chose a door to go through. _Your fate has already been decided; all that's left is for you to choose how you get to the end. Now, choose! _

"But how do I know what is behind either door?" I asked the voice.

_You don't, now make your choice , Choose!_


	2. Chapter 2

I awoke to the sound of howling of both the wind and the wolves. I left my nest of blankets and was hit with the coldness of the house. It had grown rather warm in the nest and three steps out of it I already wished to return. It was morning, the sun was rising over the hills in the distance and the pack of wolves roaming the neighborhood seemed to be sticking to my street now. This situation would only grow more dire if I chose to ignore it, how long would it take them to find a way into the backyard and the discover the dog door to get into the house? No, I had to deal with this, today. Thinking on the bright side, I would have at least four wolves to butcher up and eat for a while. I went into the hallway and opened the closet there, two 12-gauges and three hunting rifles greeted me as I looked inside. I grabbed one of each gun and some ammo to go with them. My father had taken me to the gun range many times to shoot these exact guns, so I knew how to load them and how to fire them properly.

In fact, the only thing I was never taught was how to clean and maintenance the guns which could become a problem. My plan for dealing with the wolves was simple, open the living room window, stick the shotgun out a bit, and shoot the wolves as they circled around. I would kill them all in one quick volley and be done with their stalking for good. This is not what happened unfortunately. What really happened was one of them being killed by the first lucky shot and then every other shot being a complete miss. The loud noises did scare away the wolves and with one of their pack mates dead, I could be sure they would come back with revenge on their minds. On the bright side, there were only three now. I waited a good half an hour before I dared opening the front door and when I did I was greeted by a gust of wind so cold it felt like my skin was being torn away. I winced in pain but pushed through out onto the front lawn and slowly moved towards the corpse of the wolf. I looked around constantly to avoid a sneak attack, luckily none came. I dragged the wolf inside and slammed the door shut.

I continued to drag it through the house and into the garage. There was practically nothing in here as we had just cleaned the whole place out. There were two saws, two dirt bikes, some clothing, and a washer and dryer. There was a fridge as well but it seemed to not be getting any power. The lights in this room were working fine enough for me to see what I was doing so I set to work. First I grabbed some rope and flung one end over a bit of wood that made up the rafters where we stored miscellaneous things. I then tied what resembled a knot around the hind legs of the wolf and hoisted it into the air, the knot held so I tied the loose end of rope to an anchor point so I could let go. I then got the largest bucket I could find and put it under the wolf's head. I headed back into the kitchen and took one of the chefs knifes from the knife drawer and brought it into the garage. There was only one was I was comfortable butchering up an animal, and that was making certain it was dead so, not knowing where the heart on a dog was, I did the only other thing I knew. I slit open the wolf's neck and let the blood drain into the bucket.

I sat there for a while, just watching the blood ooze out of the wolf's neck. I had never killed anything before, I took solace in knowing that the wolf would have had no trouble killing me for food and so I felt no pity. I left the garage, it would take a while for the blood to completely drain and saw no reason to stop being productive to baby the process along. I did a walk around the house making a mental note off all of the places I could fortify and insulate better. I didn't need windows in every room so covering up the bedroom and bathroom windows and giving a nice seal on the edges would keep the house a lot warmer. The kitchen window wasn't much use to me either and the dog door was just asking for trouble. Luckily my father kept the original sliding glass door on the side of the house and showed me how to change it out a few years back in case we needed to remove the dog door. We weren't exactly suppose to have dogs in our house as the landlord didn't like them very much so whenever we had an inspection we would remove any trace of them from the house. Changing out the door was the first thing I did, making my house completely safe from unwelcome wolves, unless they learned how to use a doorknob that is.

On the other side of town there was a Friedman's, basically a store that sold tools, lumber, planing supplies, and anything else that would be useful for a home remodel or restoration. If I could acquire a truck I could use it to get all of the tools and wood I would need to make my home into a fortress. I could knock down the wall separating my room and my sisters to make an indoor farm to grow some crops for food. Getting rid of the couches and other furniture from the living room I could make an armory of sorts and have a place to assemble gear for any expeditions I might need to make into the snow. The garage would easily become my work room, seeings how there was already a saws in there. My parents room I would try to turn into a computer room, this served no survival purpose, I've just always wanted a room to go to and have nothing but a desk and my computer. That's when it hit me, I have a bloody computer! If the electricity was still working then there is a good chance that the internet was as well. And at the very least, I could use my computer to entertain myself for the indefinite future. With 286 games on steam I could play for weeks and months before running out of something new. Granted I only had around twenty of those games installed, but one of them was Skyrim, and I can play Skyrim for three years straight with no problems of boredom.

I went to my room and powered on my PC, it took her a while to turn on all the way due to some neglect but when she was on she was as fast as ever. Twenty-four gigs of RAM can do that to a girl. I looked down to the bottom right of the monitor and the internet was up and running. I went to all the news websites that came to mind and all of them said roughly the same thing. '_There is no rescue, the conditions are worsening by the hour and soon the northern countries will be uninhabitable. The south is already seeing heavy snow falls. The government is no longer branching out to us, to anyone. There is no help, do whatever you can to survive. Lock your doors, find a gun, raiders and bandits are sure to be on the way._' No help? No rescue? Well….shit.


End file.
